Vectorworks Design Summit 2015

With Vectorworks 2016 Preview

This year, Vectorworks CAD and BIM software celebrates its 30th birthday. To celebrate, Nemetschek Vectorworks hosted its first Design Summit in Philadelphia. CEO Sean Flaherty kicked off the proceedings. He was a delight to listen to as he took us on a journey from the mid 1980s to the present day. It was a story that included working in Richard Diehl's living room, as the furniture was slowly sold off to fund the dream. It reminded me of my own early IT career, when I designed fonts for our hardware extension to the BBC Microcomputer. It was a story of incredible renders (given the hardware available at the time). Sean's story culminated in the picture of Nemetschek Vectorworks today—a company with over 200 people and aggressive growth targets, and a worldwide set of fans.

There were many inspiring speakers at the event—too many for me to detail here—all fuelled by abundant enthusiasm. The talk from Leo van Broeck sticks in my mind, as he showcased some of his solutions to the problem of low density housing and the resulting environmental damage. His approach to higher density living, while retaining privacy and quality of life, is inspiring.

The entire event was great opportunity for me to maintain my Vectorworks geek status, and spend face to face time with the developers. At one point, the Vertical Products manager for Vectorworks Landmark and I were suspected of playing Minecraft together, as we have been sitting at our screens together for so long, playing at terrain modelling. It was a joy to be in the same room as fellow testers and other Vectorworks distributors from around the world. These are people with whom I work with on a daily basis, but in most cases had never met. What an amazing community of people, who all share one thing—a passion for Vectorworks!

Nemetschek Vectorworks' hospitality was incredible. The party in the Philadelphia Art Museum was a chance to relax, and enjoy some great food, wine and live music. The art gallery was open to us as well and I had the great honour of discussing both the 1980s and Van Gogh's Sunflowers with Vectorworks' awesome creator, Richard Diehl. (Dr Who fans will be well aware that Sunflowers was actually created for Amy Pond after her suggestion that they might bring some happiness into his life!)

And so to the big news... Chief Technology Officer Dr Biplab Sarkar previewed some amazing new features that will be included in Vectorworks 2016. In my opinion, these will be game changers for Vectorworks users—particularly those working as part of a team. I'll talk in a little more detail about Biplab's announcements in following posts, but the headlines are:

Company

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